This is from the excellent Thanksgiving night seeing we had here in the US mid-Atlantic. This was the first night I really took advantage of the automated capture capabilities of FireCap - I was asleep during most of a four hour session. I used autorun to capture 5 minutes per color every 20 minutes, resulting in 128GB of data! It took 17 hours to derotate all those SERs in WinJupos. This is probably the best of the night. CPC1100 at f32, Flea3, Astronomik RGB filters.

I'll third that. I wouldn't have thought twice if you said that was a C14. Amazing image Kevin! I think your implementation of winjupos went way beyond theory and showed some significant results. I'd like to hear some more about the workflow on your derotation if you get the chance

Thanks for the nice comments, everyone. Below is my step-by-step writeup for "long video" derotation. Keep in mind that most folks using WinJupos are doing "short video" derotation, where they shoot a bunch of standard 60 second AVIs/SERs over, say, twenty minutes, stack each one, then use WinJupos to derotate and stack those stacks. Instead, I'm shooting 5 minutes per color and derotating those long videos. In practice, you can't really exploit Firecap's autorun capability to full advantage (imaging while sleeping!) using the short-video technique, because you'd have to shoot short videos all night long. I shoot 15 minutes (RGBx5min each) every 20 or 30 minutes all night long, which autorun can do.

1. Take one short video (60 seconds, red or green is best) to use as a reference frame, then take your long videos. I took 8 minutes each color on Saturn and 5 on Jupiter. Take SERs - WinJupos doesn't like AVIs much greater than 2GB

2. AutoStakkert2: stack the short video normally

3. WinJUPOS: Recording>Image Measurement. Enter the PNG created by AS2. You might want to sharpen it a bit first with Registax wavelets, but I'm not sure this makes a difference.

4. WinJupos: Tools>Derotation of video streams. This is the heart of the procedure. Original video is the long one, enter the start and end time (they may update themselves). Enter the image measurement file you created in Step 3. Select Corrected Video, and Start. WinJupos will create a new video in the same folder. The derotation will be centered on the middle of the time period of that video (the "reference time") - it seems that you cannot select a different time. WinJupos can derotate all your videos at once in batch mode - let me know if anyone wants details, and I'll post them here. Otherwise repeat this step for all your videos. You can use the same image measurement file for all your videos as long as the planet didn't change orientation during the night, since all WinJupos uses it for is to match orientation and size. Grischa confirmed this.

5. AutoStakkert: Stack all your derotated SERs

6. Registax: Wavelet sharpen each stacked image as desired. Save each image without altering the Winjupos name - WJ will read the times without needing manual input. (You may want to do this step last, on the merged RGB files. I do it here because I have the impression that WJ will do a better alignment on already sharpened images, but I haven't really tested this.)

8. WinJupos: Tools>Derotation of RGB frames. This is the RGB merge. Enter .ims file for each color, and compile. If you get color fringes, try this step again, setting the LD (limb darkening) value to less than 1.0 for any color channel that shows a fringe.

That's it! My PC took 17 hours to derotate 27 videos of about 4GB each, but I was using a USB2 external hard drive and a fairly old PC. You techie guys all have blazing fast PCs, right?

Kevin, I love your ability to portray Jupiter at 600 pixels with clarity and smoothness. I'd nominate this image for best C11 Jupiter photo of the year; it's indistinguishable from some of the best C14 images I've seen.

One very important point I forgot on WinJupos: In Derotation of RGB Frames, be sure to reduce the gamma for each channel. For some reason, if left to its own devices WJ seems to push the gamma up, resulting in washed out images that are difficult to color balance. IIRC, WJ has always been this way. I'm not sure why, but it's easy enough to correct. On this run I set my gamma to 0.78.

Attached Files

And another, from 0621 UT, made with the WinJupos long-video technique. I thought the first one I posted would be the best of the session, but I think I like this one best.

For the record, I had been asleep almost two hours by the time this one was captured. Thanks Torsten! I'm working on one more, from 0658, but I'm trying to get Io in that one, so I'll have to post it later.

In the large temperature drops I have in the desert the focus changes between 1-2 mm over the evening, going out. If you had a really good thermal model and history of the tube I suppose one could automate that - in theory!

Kevein - just to be sure I understand your gamma 0.78 recommendation - was that in (1) WinJupos itself or in (2)capture or (3) processing?

Wayne, Paul and Glenn, thanks for the kind words. Autorun is a great innovation, but focus is the obvious issue. But I find that nights of good seeing here in the mid-Atlantic have temp drops of only 2 degrees F or less, at least over the two hours or so that I'd leave the scope on its own (lots of trees).

Glenn - focus changes 1-2mm? Wow, the desert really is harsh! Even with temp comp, a good forecast and a good model, that would be awfully tough to deal with. I haven't worked on TC yet, but it's on the list.

And gamma is in WinJupos in the Derotate RGB Frames step. (I usually capture each channel at 80% fill on the histo.) I really ought to ask Grischa why it's like this, to make sure I'm not doing something wrong somewhere.